It was recently brought to my attention -- and by recently I mean six months ago, and when I say 'brought to my attention', I really mean 'dredged up from the viscous swamp I call a memory'.

So scratch that ...

Six months ago I was reminded of the fact that I have no style. It was a Thursday. I was entertaining the prospect of enrolling in an animation school and the rather frank, though not entirely unpleasant Director stated that while I can on occasion draw and such, I actually have no style. He may have sugar-coated it a bit more than that, but I forget. My mind has no room for extraneous details.

What he said though was true, I am still an artist very much in search of a style. Actually, I still have trouble considering myself an 'artist', I'm really just someone who likes to doodle in pencil a lot. Doodle. Such an odd word. But in that vein, I had some time spare this evening and decided to try my hand at developing such a thing. Via doodling.

I took a photograph, this one, and did a short 90 min exercise in pencil where I replicated the image a number of times, each time moving further away from a straight realistic representation. The results are below:

The last one's just silly, but hey, you've gotta go as far as you can go right? Sometimes even to the edge of 'crazy'.

I'm tempted to try the same exercise in colour, but all my colouring points are currently being utilised by the comics I'm working on. And besides, before I colour anything else, I still have to add colour to that Rock Band pic. *sigh*maybe if I slept more I could actually work more. That seems counter-intuitive and yet oddly promising.

Anyway, if anyone else would like to have a go at re-interpreting the above image in their own style (in whatever medium), give me a heads up and I'll do a follow up post.

Otherwise I shall end off with a few more of my random sketches.. Goodnight everyone!

And in other news ...

... it would seem that a significant amount of awesomeness has been bubbling and brewing around some of my fellow comics creators, whilst I've been AWOL...

Average Joe artist Kelvin Chan has been featured in this month's issue of ImagineFX which should now be bought by anyone and everyone who reads this blog (yes, all three of you. That sounds like a joke but it's not :D

He walks a fine line between pure genius and possibly mentally deranged, but Cy Dethan, author of such mind-fucks as Cancertown and upcoming The Indifference Engine is being interviewed next week on an episode of Comic Book Outsiders. I will post deets when I get them!

Creative Director for Insomnia and Letterer extroadinaire Nic Wilkinson was also recently interviewed on Comic Racks where I believe she discusses a topic very close to my own heart - Rock Band! And because no blog post is complete without mentioning it at least six times - Rock Band Rock Band Rock Band Rock Band Rock Band.

Well, podcasts seem to be the theme for the week, so just to continue it would seem that Cancertown artist Stephen Downey and author of Kronos City, Andrew Croskery were recently interviewed on Sunnyside Comics, a comics podcast from Belfast Ireland. And as if that wasn't enough, Stephen also has an 8 page story featured in Bob Heske's upcoming 2012: Final Prayer Anthology, written by Bob Heske himself. Which I personally can not wait to read.

Closer to home, a short 6-page comic I worked on with the duo of awesomeness Shamere Borg and Xander Bennett has also been selected to take part in Bob Heske's 2012 Anthology. Yay!

Phew! That was a lot of info in a short amount of time!

Monster Mash

And here's another piece I did while away, 'commissioned' by my good friend Xander Bennett

For those who can't aptly decipher my scrawled inks, it's the ultimate RockBand configuration according to Xander. Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, King Ghidora, and Mothra. But in black and white. I hope to have a coloured version up by the end of the week. Hopefully in a style similar to this perhaps.

Speaking of ConceptArt.org, I also now have a gallery there, which can be found here.

Lacking Substance? The Filler You Ordered is Below.

Well I've finally returned home, leaving the warmth and sun of California for the stormy winter weather of Perth, and about a three-week backlog of work and emails to catch up on.

To counteract the fact that I'm a) a tad busy and b) mostly lazy, I decided that instead of giving you the blog post of awesomeness you so rightly deserve, I'd fake it and just post up sketches... of nothing in particular.

So below... sketches I did whilst away... with more to come.

We will return to our regular programming shortly.

I actually survived the Con. Thank god.

Should anyone so desire to know how, there's a brief write-up I did which can be read here on the Insomnia blog.

I will be returning home from LA this weekend and shall post up art from the last two weeks then. Yay.

Ok! So San Diego is finally upon us!! Huzzah.

I'm heading down tomorrow from LA, and am looking forward to spending a large chunk of Thursday afternoon exploring the Indie booths and Artists' Alley. I've also FINALLY thrown together a *rough* schedule of panels I'm hoping to attend over Friday and Saturday (an event in itself).

Friday and Saturday's programme for me will be as follows:

FRIDAY

11-12 - How-to with Chuk Wojtkiewicz: pencilled for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, now lead concept

artist at Blur Studios here in LA.

12-1 - Masterclass with Mike Mignola: Expressionistic Atmoshperes

2.30-3.30 - Focus Features: 9 (Steve Acker, Tim Burton, Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly)

6.30-7.30 - Entertainment Weekly: James Cameron and Peter Jackson

SATURDAY

10-11 - How to Get a Job in Video Games

12-1 - Masterclass with Dave Gibbons: The Heroic Figure

1-2 - Masterclass with Jeff Smith: The Art of the Panel

2-3 - Drawing Lessons From Great Masters: Classic principles from great artists of early

20th Century comics and illustration.

4-5 - Paramount: Iron Man 2 (Robert Downey Jr. Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett

Johanssen, Mickey Rourke, Jon Favreau and Samuel L. Blackson.

6-7 - Digital Colour Styles and FX with Brian Miller

Sweet, right? A number of these involve bringing a sketchbook, so hopefully I'll have some sketches and samples to report back with next week!!!

See ya then!

New Comic Pages!

Not much time for new stuff this week with my trip to LA and the big San Diego Comic-Con looming, but I have got a couple of pages from the latest comic I'm colouring for Insomnia Publications.

The comic in question goes by the name of Average Joe, and believe me when I say there's nothing 'average' about it (pfft, someone was going to use that somewhere, it might as well have been me).

Unlike my lame jokes it rests on the completely unlame and awesome-to-the-max end of the spectrum. Written by the extremely talented Thomas Romeo and made manifest in the beautiful artwork of Mr Kelvin Chan, it's sure to bring about an end to third world hunger as we know it. Or at the very least, satiate the desire for a highly entertaining and massively addictive read.

Robot Pirates 2: Pilgrimage to Mecca-no

And some further developments with the Robot Pirates...

We've gone with a slightly more anthropomorphized design, and I've tried to make them look a lot more 'pieced together' from scrap metal and bits of junk. They're looking cooler, but could do with a bit more saturation looking at them now online.

Man, it confirms just how completely non-mechanically minded I am. I have NO IDEA how bolts and washers and wingnuts and doodahs and thingymajibs could possibly go together to construct a robot.

I blame it on my Meccano-deprived childhood. And Barbie. She is the Plastic Prophet of Evil. And Skipper is her acolyte.

Robots and Clowns and Awesome Chinese Steampunk Animation. And possibly Bears, oh my.

Yay! Finally some more stuff to post up. Clearly my 'five environment sketches in one week' didn't realy amount to anything. One might even say I produced nothing but a barren landscape... :-) *crickets*

...yes, one might say that. eh heh.

But other than committing heinous acts against the written word, I've suddenly found my free time to be taken over with character sketches. Partly because there's been a call for them and partly because... well, they're just easier to do. If you're lazy that is and don't mind doing them badly :-D

Nehoo, they are posted below.

In and amongst colouring Issue 1. of Average Joe (which is awesomely funny and has lovely art thanks Thomas Romeo and Kelvin Chan), I've started fiddling around with character designs for a children's project a friend is doing. It involves robots. And pirates. Need I say more? :-D Anyway, that's what the designs in the last image are for.

They turned out ok. I think the top right robot is a tad too Futurama influenced, and the bottom 'tank' looks like it was designed by a Japanese toy maker, but what the hey. It's a start! The other two character designs were just me playing around with a melancholic clown and a homeless mad hatter.

Anyway I'll leave it at that for today.

And with a final note... if you have a couple of minutes to spare then watch this. It's sweet. Beautiful production design.

Outline for this week: Four Exterior Concept Paintings. 

It was going to be five, but the above image took longer than anticipated. Which means I need to find a way to work faster in a manner that serves the painting if I'm going to successfully crank out another four pieces amongst various comic pages. The above is fine. I'm happy with the colours, composition and mood, but it would please me more if I could master the art of suggestive and expressive brushstrokes. Oh well, one down, three more to go...

Fil-ler

After a five-month hiatus this blog is being resurrected. Well, maybe not resurrected. Resurrection would imply that it was living to begin with, which is a bit of a long stretch considering that at its most lively there was very little to distinguish it from something a carrion bird might look upon as lunch. But we're trying again. There's a number of pieces to be going up in the next week or so, including hopefully the first page or two of a new short comic I'm playing around with. Until then, I leave you with the above character sketch from the afore-mentioned short comic. His name is Fil.